This Intel-backed Finnish startup has turned laptop design upside down – and they will not make Nokia’s mistake

Apple has just unveiled their latest lineup of MacBooks and everything seems to be business-as-usual in laptop markets.

But in Finland, a startup led by a 22-year-old is challenging the industry’s norms.

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Less than three years from its founding, smart-device maker Eve Tech has already inked a partnership with Microsoft, and more recently secured a six-figure investment from Intel.

The team's ambitions are high. Referring to Eve Tech's playfully announced goal, to revive Finnish consumer tech prowess and surpass Nokia, the company's co-founder and CEO Konstantinos Karatsevidis has said to Finnish paper Iltalehti:

“Nokia is a separate story. They weren’t able to change fast enough. We don’t have that problem.”

All of this got started at a poker table in Helsinki.

During Karatsevidis' last year of studies he met his future co-founder, Mike, at a poker night; an evening that would evolve into a long discussion about startups and tech. Karatsevidis tells Business Insider Nordic that the two agreed on one thing in particular:

“Smart devices were either 'affordable' devices with tasteless design, poor performance and full of bloatware – or Apple devices, nice but terribly overpriced.”

Soon afterwards, they founded Eve Tech around a vision to build the perfect product that would be well-functioning, beautiful and affordable.

Karatsevidis, the youngest in a 24-man team, brings youthful vision and commercial acumen. At 12, he was already working as an interpreter at tech conferences, and later became a sourcing director in a major company in Ukraine. The co-founder, Mike, is, according to Karatsevidis, a '101% tech geek', and very conscious of his privacy. Eve Tech's core team members have long track records in the industry, having worked on devices including iPhone 6, Fitbit and OnePlus.

But what makes Eve Tech stand out is their approach to building devices.

“Our vision is to change the way technology is developed by putting end users in charge of development.”

The idea was born after Eve Tech’s first product launch in late 2014, of the budget-priced Eve T1 Windows tablet. The T1 had a warm reception internationally and sold well, but the founders would also get a lot of feedback and suggestions for new features.

Feedback for the T1 prompted Eve-Tech to involve customers and tech enthusiasts in the design process.

Eve-Tech

Karatsevidis says they noticed that the same was true in the smart device market as a whole:

“Most of the players, like Apple, Samsung and Lenovo were established decades ago and their management is simply not used to the new online age. Because of this, the device-creating process [...] is compromised many times, the original intent is lost, and the end users’ demands are not understood.”

That prompted Eve Tech to set up an online platform where the company could connect with with tech enthusiasts and users, and receive new feature suggestions – ranging from battery specs and device color, all the way to which external ports to include.

Throughout this year, the community has contributed to a project codenamed Pyramid Flipper (referring to a corporate pyramid turned on its head), a laptop-tablet hybrid.

Community members have had direct access to the product design team, and no internal decision has been made without the community's input. The community’s most active and skilled members, ‘Insiders’, are bound by an NDA, and, according to Karatsevidis, considered as an external board of directors.

Beyond technical feature suggestions, the 1,300 people strong community has doubled as an early customer focus group. Karatsevidis gave an example to Finnish paper Iltalehti:

The Eve Tech team were debating if they should use pen for their forthcoming product’s touchscreen, but decided it was not necessary. But after a poll among the community revealed that 89% of the members would not buy the device without a pen, Eve Tech “had no choice” but to include it.

The Pyramid Flipper project was later redubbed into what is now the Eve V laptop, and it includes several features sourced from the community.

According to Eve Tech’s website, their lean and community-based philosophy results in:

A cheaper product, by cutting out middlemen and only selling online

Design that is adapted to customer needs

Less pre-installed bloatware

Next month Eve Tech will put 500 units of its new laptop on early release as it launches an Indiegogo fundraising campaign to mass produce the Eve V. The company has said the budget model will be around $900, and the one with a bigger screen (above) $1,800 dollars excluding tax.

When asked about the biggest community-related lesson learnt, Karatsevidis said that honesty was key:

"Being upfront about the company’s limited resources resulted in a self-aware and smart community that feels like a big family. For the next project we will improve our community platform in order to make collaboration and idea-tracking easier."

Eve Tech's future ambitions extend beyond smart devices. Karatsevidis says his dream is to keep co-creating new products with his community: 'We are very hyped about alternative reality, AI, electric cars and boats.'